This is the epitome of crying wolf. Mike, like many people before him, proposed an idea. That idea was was dissected finding most of its faults. That's all that happened. There were no "Dirty Deals in Smoke-Filled Rooms", the mailing list is public and anyone can propose an idea there. Since the development mailing list is full of people who actually understand how Bitcoin works on a technical level it's the best place to propose changes to Bitcoin as you'll get responses from people who actually know what they're talking about. On this forum you would get a bunch of emotionally charged responses from people who have never seen a line of Bitcoin code.

You can join the mailing list here: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development

Mike's controversial idea is neither the first nor the last that will likely not make it on this forum for the simple reason that such ideas will die very quickly on the mailing list. Only the ones that gain traction will eventually be discussed here, just search the payment protocol proposal for an example.


 What is crime? Who gets to define it? A lot of people, including myself, consider Bitcoins neutrality to be a fundamental part of the protocol.